How to stay healthy if you're sitting at your desk all day

Sitting for eight hours a day doesn’t seem to raise
your risk for dying early, according to a new analysis of previous
studies—but only if you get at least an hour of exercise daily. The results, published in the Lancet, may be
reassuring for people stuck behind a desk all day, say health experts,
but it should also serve as an important reminder: If you have to sit
for long periods, your daily workout is vital to your well-being.

The connection between sitting and dying has been studied extensively, and has inspired many scary headlines
in the media. And while this research didn’t actually look at any new
data, it did combine information from 16 previous studies in a way than
hadn’t been done before.

Using this data, researchers were able to directly compare death
rates over a certain period of time between people with different levels
of sitting time and physical activity. “Examining the joint effects of
these two behaviors is important,” they wrote, “because most people
engage in both behaviors every day.”

RELATED:Constantly Sitting Down Could Worsen Anxiety And Mental Health
After crunching the numbers, the international team of researchers
found that a sedentary lifestyle was indeed associated with an increased
risk of death over the next decade. But the more people were active
when they weren’t sitting, the more their risk went down. And
for people who got the most daily exercise—at least 60 to 75 minutes of
moderate physical activity—the increased risk disappeared completely.

In fact, those who sat for at least eight hours a day but were also
in the highest exercise group actually had a lower risk of dying than
those who sat for four hours or less but who reported the lowest amount
of daily exercise (about five minutes a day). The researchers also looked specifically at studies on television
watching, rather than just sitting. Once again, they found that too much
sedentary time—in these cases, at least five hours a day of TV viewing—was linked to early death.

But they also found one significant difference: In these studies,
getting lots of exercise only seemed to lessen the risk of dying—not
eliminate it completely. (The researchers don’t know why, but they
speculate that TV watching may also involve snacking as well as sitting,
making its harmful effects harder to counteract with exercise alone.)

Co-author Ulf Ekelund, PhD, professor of sports medicine at the
Norwegian School of Sports Sciences in Norway, says that an hour a day
of moderate physical activity is a good goal for many people. He points
out, however, that exercise recommendations shouldn’t be the same across
the board.

“I can’t stress enough that lower amounts of activity are also
beneficial,” he says. And for people who are already getting an hour of
exercise a day, they shouldn’t necessarily stop there—or use it as an
excuse to be sedentary the rest of the time. “The results suggest that the less you sit (or watch TV) and the more
you are active the better,” he says. “The take-home message is ‘Sit
less, move more—and the more the better.’”

That doesn't necessarily mean you have to live at the gym, adds Pam Peeke, MD, a national spokesperson for the American College of Sports Medicine and author of Fit to Live. Your physical activity can spread out throughout the day. "Get
up for 5 to 10 minutes per hour when you're stuck at a desk," she
suggests. "Go up and down stairs. Walk and talk on the phone using a
headset." And when you can, schedule more deliberate exercise time, like a yoga class or a morning run with a friend. "It all counts—and will save your life."